The gap between Americans raised before World War II and after was huge in a way that’s difficult to recall for those of us who came of age after the ’60s. Greatest Generation parents who might have grown up without on-demand indoor plumbing and survived the Depression and fighting in Europe, the Pacific, North Africa, and Korea came from a different planet than the one on which they raised their kids. To their credit, they bequeathed to the baby boomers a world that was still full of major problems but one that was much richer and full of opportunities. And to their credit, the boomers (of which I’m a very late example, having been born in 1963) readily went about using new opportunities and freedoms (expressive, sexual, educational, economic) to build the world they wanted to live in.
In the late ’60s and a good chunk of the ’70s, youth-oriented pop music was central to that project. Whatever you might think of the Beatles’ music, their very existence — and their constant self-recreations — made everything seem possible. They were far from alone as pop music maguses, too.
Simply by talking with major pop figures, Rolling Stone could be a vital and compelling magazine because it served as something like a boomer conversation pit. Over time, however, music stopped playing the same sort of vital role in generational conversations — don’t get me wrong, it’s still a part of it all. But as the mainstream in every area of life splintered and recombined into a million different subspecies, no single form of cultural expression matters so much to so many people anymore.
That’s a good thing for the culture and the country (and the planet, really), but Rolling Stone has been looking for a replacement core identity for decades now. The magazine that once published New Journalism masterpieces about David Cassidy and stardom, Patty Hearst’s rescuers, and “Charlie Simpson’s Apocalypse” had trouble figuring out how to deal with a world in which pop and movie stars were less interesting than ever (and more disciplined in terms of talking with the press) and in which men and women of good faith might actually disagree over complicated aesthetic and ideological matters. There has been a lot of good writing and reporting over the years, but there’s no question, I think, that the magazine is chasing trends and insights rather than creating them.
[…]
In a world in which pop culture — especially youth-oriented pop culture — allows a thousand flowers to bloom in a way that was unimaginable even 40 years ago, Rolling Stone can no longer get by simply by talking with Patti Smith or John Lennon or Bob Dylan for 25,000 words at a time. It might have reinvented itself as a clubhouse where people who love music or movies or whatever could get together to argue over politics, economics, and policy. That could indeed be interesting, especially in a world where large chunks of young Americans are going right, left, and especially libertarian. Just as there is no longer one dominant mode of music, there is no longer one dominant mode of politics.
But the people at the helm of Rolling Stone cannot seemingly even acknowledge that anyone who might disagree with them on, say, the effects of minimum wage laws on the poor, is worth a second thought. All they can do, out of a sense of liberal guilt, is publish radical calls to arm that they must know are ridiculous. Sadly, a magazine that was once required reading for anyone who wanted to know what the younger generation cared about is now a pedantic, insecure, and ultimately ineffective tool of Democratic Party groupthink.
Nick Gillespie, “Rolling Stone‘s Sad ‘5 Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For'”, Hit and Run, 2014-01-04
April 3, 2015
QotD: The long decline of Rolling Stone
April 2, 2015
Gordon Lightfoot – Canadian Railroad Trilogy
March 29, 2015
March 27, 2015
Stanley Jordan – Autumn Leaves 1990
Published on 12 Jul 2013
Live in Montreal Jazz Festival 1990
Bass player Charnett Moffett
The drummer Tommy Campbell
H/T to Victor for the link.
QotD: Perfectionism
It’s all so subjective, you know? I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’ve learned over the years that people get upset when they tell you something is their favorite movie and you go, “Really? You liked that piece of shit?” That’s the sort of thing Sean Penn would say. So I now tell people, “Thank you, that’s great,” and move on. But you know, I remember John Lennon saying that if he could, he’d go back and burn most of the work the Beatles did. He said he’d rerecord all the fucking songs, and I get that. Most of my work I would just stomp into the ground and start over again.
Gary Oldman, interviewed by David Hochman, “Playboy Interview: Gary Oldman”, Playboy, 2014-06-23.
March 22, 2015
March 15, 2015
Neil Young – Harvest Moon (unplugged)
Uploaded on 13 Oct 2010
Neil Young and friends on MTV Unplugged playing Harvest Moon.
March 8, 2015
Neil Young – Long May You Run (unplugged)
Uploaded on 13 Oct 2010
Neil Young and friends at MTV Unplugged playing Long May You Run.
H/T to Brendan McKenna for the link.
March 5, 2015
John Coltrane – A Love Supreme (Full album, 1964)
The album that made me start paying attention to jazz…
Published on 9 Dec 2013
JOHN COLTRANE
“A LOVE SUPREME”
1964
(Impulse)Genre: Modal Jazz, Avant-garde Jazz
Tracklist:
1. A Love Supreme, Part 1: Acknowledgement
2. A Love Supreme, Part 2: Resolution
3. A Love Supreme, Part 3: Pursuance/Part 4: PsalmPersonnel:
John Coltrane, tenor sax
McCoy Tyner, piano
Jimmy Garrison, bass
Elvin Jones, drums
H/T to Josh Jones at Open Culture for the link.
What can I add to the chorus of voices in praise of John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? Recorded in December of 1964 and released fifty years ago this month, the album has gone on to achieve cult status — literally inspiring a church founded in Coltrane’s name — as one of the finest works of jazz or any other form of music. It cemented Coltrane’s name in the pantheon of great composers, and re-invented religious music for a secular age. Composed as a hymn of praise and gratitude, “the bizarre suite of four movements,” wrote NPR’s Arun Rath last year, “communicated a profound spiritual and philosophical message.” That message is articulated explicitly by Coltrane in the album’s liner notes as “a humble offering to Him,” the deity he experienced in a 1957 “spiritual awakening” that “lead me to a richer, fuller, more productive life.”
February 26, 2015
QotD: The basis of the music industry
Bad players buy expensive guitars over and over because they figure it will make them better players. The entire music instrument industry is based on it. There’s Stevie Ray Vaughan, poised to be something more, but still a spare part on his more notable brother’s stage, with a borrowed Telecaster, a guitar as useful as a boat oar, putting the lie to that whole idea. People take drugs because they think it will make them as interesting as interesting people that take drugs. The entire drug industry is based on it.
Sippican Cottage, “Mind If My Little Brother Sits In?”, Sippican Cottage, 2014-06-15.
February 19, 2015
February 5, 2015
Peter Freedman talks to Alan Parsons
By way of Ghost of a Flea, an interesting look at one of the pivotal men in music from the late 60s onward:
Uploaded on 28 Feb 2011
In the ‘Interview with a Legend’ series RØDE Microphones’ founder and director Peter Freedman hosts an intimate discussion with icons from all areas of the audio industry including Engineers, Producers, Musicians, Artists and Entrepreneurs.
A musical pioneer in the truest sense, Alan Parsons is one of the most revered engineers and producers in history.
Alan talks candidly to Peter about how hearing Sgt Peppers was a defining moment in his life and career, setting him on the path to Abbey Road Studios where he would play an integral role in such timeless recordings as The Beatles’ infamous Let It Be rooftop performance and Pink Floyd’s masterpiece Dark Side of the Moon.
He goes on to discuss the incredibly influential Alan Parsons Project, and the future of recording.
January 30, 2015
Cloudbusting covers “Under Ice” and “Wow”
Published on 24 Oct 2014
Cloudbusting performing Kate Bush’s ‘Under Ice’ and ‘Wow’. Recorded live at Tavistock Wharf, Oct 2014
January 27, 2015
Maddy Prior’s “The Sovereign Prince”
The mariner is sailing
Sailing across the sea
Seeking out the enemy
Bringing spices back home to me
Spanish gold for the taking
At the harbour of Cadiz
Their fleet they left a-blazing
On the Ocean bed, stone cold, her cannons lie
Eldorado lies a shimmering
Shimmering like a mirage
Luring the merchant venturers
On a brutal grim and overlong voyage
Treasure laden galleons
Lemons, melons and quince
Strange exotic cargo
Gift and garlands fit for the Prince
And Gloriana rules with a woman’s wiles
Plays the coquette with politics and smiles
A computer for a brain in the body of a child
All temper and guile
And the girls on the beach
They are lying out of reach
They rub oil on their skins
And roll in the sand of hated Spain
And the girls in sidewalk bars
Drink their coffee, smoke their cigars
And laugh at the waiting maid
Who covers afraid of the Prince
And Gloriana in stiff starched lace
With pearls in her hair and thunder on her face
Screams with rage: Has God left this place?
There’s no God in this place
And the girls on the phone
Ring collect when they call home
And talk inconsequent
Will pass in a moment a thousand miles
And the girls in the airport lounge
Are awaiting the tannoy sound
For the flight to Brazil
With a couple of weeks to kill in the sun
And Gloriana so harsh and chaste
The soldier in her breast is raging at the waste
Of Victories lost and battles left unfaced
For want of such haste
And the girls in high-strapped shoes
With a tan they never lose
Wear the cross of gold
In memory of stories told in Sunday School
And the girls without the Church
Leave their lovers in the church
But seldom sleep alone
And think no more of Rome than a tourist town
And Gloriana sits slumped on the throne
Her head in her hands is weeping alone
Dreaming of the past and times that are gone
Dreams of time to come
And the mariner is sailing
Sailing across the sea
Seeking out the enemy
Bringing spices back home to me
Bring me my scallops shell of quiet
My staff of faith to walk upon
My scrip of joy, immortal diet
My bottle of salvation
My Gown of glory, hopes true gauge
And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage
(Raleigh)
January 26, 2015
Al Stewart performs “Year of the Cat” at the Royal Albert Hall
Published on 25 Sep 2014
On October 15, 2013 Al Stewart performed his classic “Year Of The Cat” album in its entirety for the first time ever in London at the Royal Albert Hall, with a band containing many of the musicians who played on the original recording.
Here is Al performing the title song with original band members Peter White (piano, musical director), Tim Renwick (el gtr), Stuart Elliott (drums) and Phil Kenzie (alto sax)- along with Mark Griffiths (bass), Dave Nachmanoff (gtr) and Joe Becket (perc).
